0:00

One

0:04

of America's Supreme Court justices

0:07

is in a major corruption scandal,

0:09

and you'll never guess who. Okay,

0:12

it's Clarence Thomas. Justice

0:16

Thomas has had the courage to

0:19

define his own approach at

0:22

the cost of being misunderstood. I'm

0:26

Julia Longoria. This

0:29

is More

0:29

Perfect. Asians

0:34

should be getting into Harvard more than whites, but

0:36

they don't because Harvard gives them significantly

0:39

lower personal ratings. Harvard

0:41

ranks Asians

0:41

less likable, confident, and kind.

0:43

Affirmative action is back

0:46

at the Supreme Court. Asian

0:48

students say they're cheated by Harvard

0:50

and UNC's policies of quote-unquote

0:53

diversity. But while

0:55

I was listening to lawyers argue, I was

0:57

transfixed on one

0:59

person in the room, someone

1:02

who used to never speak in court. Now

1:06

he's the first one to speak up. Mr.

1:09

Park, I've heard the

1:11

word diversity quite a few

1:13

times, and I don't have a clue what it means. Justice

1:16

Clarence Thomas. It seems

1:18

to mean everything for everyone.

1:22

Clarence Thomas is not a fan of affirmative

1:24

action, and I've always wondered

1:26

why. He was the

1:29

only person of color on the court for nearly 20

1:31

years. Could the court

1:33

use some affirmative action? But

1:35

throughout that time, he's always been against

1:38

it. Today, Clarence

1:40

Thomas

1:40

is the most senior justice

1:43

sitting up there. In five more years,

1:45

he could become the longest-serving justice

1:48

ever on the Supreme Court. And

1:51

to some Americans, Clarence

1:53

Thomas makes no sense.

1:58

He wants to kill affirmative action. He

2:00

helped dismantle the Voting Rights Act. He

2:02

accepted gifts from a Republican megadonor

2:05

without reporting it. His wife

2:07

urged the White House to overturn

2:08

the 2020 election, and

2:11

then there was the way we were all introduced to him,

2:13

with the allegations Anita Hill made against

2:16

him in his confirmation hearings. On

2:19

the other hand, some Americans

2:21

feel like he's one of the only

2:23

ones who makes sense. But he's restoring

2:26

justice to our country, one

2:28

decision at a time. This

2:31

week on More Perfect, we

2:33

asked a pretty basic question.

2:36

What does Clarence Thomas think

2:39

Clarence Thomas is doing? It

2:42

pains me deeply, or more

2:44

deeply, than any of you can imagine,

2:47

to be perceived by

2:48

so many members of my race as

2:51

doing them harm. All

2:53

the sacrifice, all the long

2:55

hours of preparation, were to help,

2:57

not to hurt. To search for

3:00

an answer, we looked at what's been hiding

3:02

in plain sight over the last 40 years.

3:05

His public speeches, his writings on

3:07

the court, and we talked to people who

3:10

studied him, got to know him on a personal

3:12

level. All to try to

3:14

understand, arguably,

3:16

the most powerful black man in America.

3:19

How his past informs

3:21

the decisions he makes

3:22

today. When I first heard it, I

3:25

was like, wow, you know, who would guess

3:27

that, you know, this Reagan appointee

3:30

is such an admirer of

3:33

the famous black radical Malcolm X?

3:35

You might even say, we found a black

3:38

nationalist. That's what led me to think,

3:40

hey, look,

3:40

Justice Thomas really sees himself sort

3:42

of as a Malcolm X, so

3:45

I'll call him Clarence X. Who

3:47

believes that America is incurably racist.

3:50

You were black, things were

3:51

changing, and we were very, very

3:54

upset. And that the best hope for black

3:56

people in America lies only

3:59

within them. There is

4:01

a part of Thomas that is hard to walk

4:03

away from because once

4:06

you let him in the door, he starts

4:09

saying certain things that you might find

4:11

yourself agreeing with.

4:13

And then the question is, well, how do

4:15

I, how do I get him out of the house then?

4:29

For the court has now

4:31

said it has not saved

4:33

the United States and this

4:35

honorable court. The honorable

4:40

call of the Chief Justice

4:42

and the Associate Justice is of the Supreme

4:44

Court of the United States. What

5:00

is the word on the street?

5:05

Word on the street is you kind of brought

5:07

Clarence Thomas to the attention of Ronald

5:09

Reagan. Do we have

5:11

you to thank for Justice Clarence Thomas,

5:13

you think? Holy moly.

5:18

This is Juan Williams. I'm a senior

5:21

news analyst for Fox News

5:23

Channel and I formerly was

5:25

a correspondent for The Washington

5:27

Post, for NPR. The

5:30

word on the street comes from Juan

5:32

himself. He kind of put Clarence

5:35

Thomas on the map. It

5:38

all started in 1980 at the Fairmont Hotel. So

5:42

it's a rather grand hotel on a

5:46

cliff overlooking San Francisco

5:48

Bay. It's right there. The hotel

5:51

was bustling with black academics,

5:53

black MDs, black lawyers, black dentists,

5:56

black political hopefuls dressed

5:58

in dark blue suits. It

6:01

was December of 1980, and

6:03

Ronald Reagan had just been elected. Juan

6:06

was on assignment for the Washington Post

6:08

to cover something called the Black Alternatives

6:11

Conference, organized by a conservative

6:13

think tank. The event attracted

6:16

black Republicans, who were anomalies

6:18

at the time, and many disillusioned Democrats.

6:21

And we were in a conference

6:23

room and seated at a table, white

6:27

tablecloth.

6:28

At lunch, he happens to take a seat

6:31

at the same table as this one guy. This

6:34

young, very eager

6:36

and very engaging young

6:39

man wearing glasses. He

6:41

wasn't a headliner or anything. He

6:43

was an aide for a Republican senator

6:45

from Missouri, who had paid his own

6:47

way to be at the conference.

6:49

And quite, you know,

6:51

deliberate in his thinking. And

6:54

right off the bat, young Clarence Thomas

6:56

came in hot. Here

6:59

was Thomas saying, this

7:02

is a moment when the black community

7:04

needs to realize that the civil rights movement

7:07

seems to be stalled.

7:09

Take desegregating schools. Thomas

7:12

said it's not leading to better outcomes

7:14

for black students. He'd later

7:16

write about this in reference to Brown

7:18

v. Board of Education, which declared

7:20

racial segregation of schools

7:22

unconstitutional. He thinks, you

7:24

know, everybody celebrates it, but he

7:26

thinks it was wrongly argued.

7:29

Any time the government tried to help, he

7:31

said, it just made things worse.

7:34

And he offered the example of his sister,

7:37

who he said was so dependent on government

7:39

aid. She just waits by

7:41

the mailbox for the mailman, and he

7:44

found this tragic. Why

7:46

is his sister in a position

7:49

where she's just waiting for a welfare check?

7:51

Were you pushing back

7:53

on his ideas? I think so. I mean,

7:55

the idea was to try to get him to say more.

7:58

I mean, it was like, huh, that's not true. This is

8:00

fascinating. Why do you say that? Explain

8:02

it to me." And then it's not like you

8:05

just went and talked to the guy who runs the NAACP.

8:09

This guy is the other side of the tracks

8:11

here. He's the outsider. So when it comes

8:13

time to write the column about

8:15

the conference, Juan

8:17

ends up focusing entirely on

8:19

the no-name aid, Clarence Thomas.

8:22

The column runs in the morning paper. What

8:25

did Thomas think about your article? He didn't

8:27

like it. I had never been

8:29

in a newspaper before. And

8:32

I saw myself on the op-ed

8:34

page of The Washington Post. I

8:37

thought I would die. He

8:39

had never been subject to that kind

8:42

of media spotlight.

8:45

The response from most readers of The Washington

8:47

Post was, wow, this guy's out of his mind.

8:50

Why is he bringing up his sister? Why is

8:52

he putting her in that ugly

8:55

public position? There was

8:57

criticism, name-calling,

9:02

ad hominem attacks, and

9:04

vilification.

9:05

This was all

9:08

new to me. What bothered

9:10

him was the public reaction.

9:13

It was overwhelming. Not

9:15

everyone criticized Thomas. President

9:18

Ronald Reagan's team was busy scouting

9:21

new hires, and they liked

9:23

what they saw. Reagan would eventually

9:25

hire Clarence Thomas to head up the Equal

9:27

Employment Opportunity Commission, but

9:30

the initial blowback to the article stung

9:33

Thomas. I had reached out to him

9:35

afterwards, and he shut me down and

9:37

didn't talk

9:38

to me. I think it was close

9:40

to six months before he agreed to have lunch.

9:43

Juan says they agreed to another white

9:45

tablecloth

9:45

lunch, this time at

9:47

the Old Ebbitt Grill in D.C. The

9:50

famous restaurant still exists right

9:53

next to the White House there. And they

9:55

get to talking. I remember sitting in a booth

9:57

with him, and he had a lot of

9:59

fun. acted as if I had hurt him. And I'm

10:01

like, but I just quoted you. Dude,

10:04

this is what you told me. And

10:07

he keeps repeating the same stuff anyway.

10:09

So our relationship got back on track.

10:13

This was the first of many meetings

10:16

over the years. There were lunches, meetings

10:19

in Clarence Thomas' office. Slowly,

10:21

it started to look like a friendship.

10:24

Juan says they'd even come

10:26

over to his house. I remember

10:28

we used to mess around with weights in

10:30

my basement. And it's rare that

10:32

people ever say this, but physically, Clarence Thomas is

10:34

built like a football player. He

10:37

would say he backs off weights at times because

10:39

he just got too bulky. And

10:41

for me, as a skinny guy, I was like, no, I need

10:43

to give bulky.

10:46

Juan Williams learned a lot about Clarence

10:48

Thomas in these conversations, about

10:50

his views, about how he grew up. But

10:53

the funny thing is, Clarence Thomas

10:56

also learned something about Clarence Thomas.

10:59

Who Juan's writing about him. For

11:01

the first time, I was designated

11:04

a black conservative.

11:08

This was news to me. I

11:12

had been called a lot of things in my life, but

11:16

never a conservative. I'm not

11:18

going to do

11:20

that.

11:20

He'd voted for Democrats like George

11:22

McGovern and Hubert Humphrey in the past.

11:26

So how did this man, who was one of

11:28

the most conservative justices on

11:30

the Supreme Court today, start

11:32

out? That, for me,

11:34

was really the beginning of the puzzle,

11:37

was how somebody can move

11:39

from one side of the spectrum to the other

11:42

without, in some ways, changing

11:44

very much at all. That's

11:46

political scientist Corey Robin. He

11:49

read Juan Williams' work and went on

11:51

to write his own book, The Enigma

11:53

of Clarence Thomas, which a

11:56

former clerk told us caught the attention

11:58

of Thomas's wife.

11:59

And he told us that Justice

12:02

Thomas' wife, Ginny Thomas, sent

12:05

an email to a listserv

12:08

of former Clarence Thomas clerks railing

12:12

about how this Marxist professor thinks

12:14

he understands

12:15

her husband better than her she does. Oh,

12:18

wow. That's pretty cool.

12:20

I had no idea. Cory

12:23

says he used to think of Thomas as a political

12:25

hack, a hatchet man for the Republican

12:27

Party, who just happens to be black.

12:30

But reading Juan Williams'

12:32

account and immersing

12:34

himself in Thomas' own judicial opinions,

12:37

Cory started to see a completely

12:39

different portrait emerge. He thinks

12:42

about

12:42

race all the time,

12:45

that black people get

12:47

the short end of the stick in America.

12:49

It is at the center of his worldview,

12:53

which is rooted in his past growing

12:55

up in the South. I always tell my

12:57

wife, my whole life is just one miracle

13:00

after another because it

13:02

should have

13:02

ended tragically. Clarence

13:07

Thomas was born in Pinpoint, Georgia,

13:09

about 10 miles south of

13:12

Savannah. It was a

13:14

tiny community of about 100 people, first

13:17

settled after the Civil War by freed

13:19

black people. Growing

13:21

up, he spoke Gullah, a Creole

13:23

mixture of African languages and English. His

13:26

father left when I think he was very

13:28

young, disappeared. His

13:30

mother couldn't raise her kids,

13:34

and she ultimately brought

13:37

Thomas and his brother to live

13:39

with her father, his grandfather.

13:42

For Thomas, living with his grandfather, Myers

13:45

Anderson, was

13:46

a huge influence on his life. It

13:49

provided a blueprint for how to see the world

13:51

going forward. He called his own

13:53

autobiography, My Grandfather's

13:55

Son. He talks with

13:58

great

13:58

emotion about... You know,

14:00

his grandfather doing some kind of farm

14:02

labor in the back of the house, and

14:05

this white woman driving up. Thomas

14:08

said this woman, Miss Morgan, drove

14:10

up the dirt road leading to the house in

14:12

a big Buick. And you can see the dust

14:15

coming from her car hitting

14:16

the tires of her car rolling

14:19

through the dirt road. Miss

14:21

Morgan got out of the car, walked up

14:23

to his grandfather, calling his grandfather

14:25

boy, and insulted him in

14:27

front of Thomas and his brother. And

14:30

to watch him first look at

14:32

us, and then look back

14:34

at her, then look at us again. And

14:38

as little kids,

14:38

you know, I think you think, now what

14:40

are you going to do? And

14:44

how are you going to deal with it? You're the greatest

14:46

man we know. The

14:49

choice his grandfather faced in this moment,

14:52

as Thomas saw it, was between

14:54

lashing out

14:55

and staying calm, maintaining

14:58

his dignity. He did the

15:01

hard thing to hold

15:03

his discipline. His grandfather

15:05

grit his teeth and just accept that

15:09

treatment as a subservient.

15:12

His grandfather was just two generations

15:15

out from slavery, and he had high

15:18

hopes for his grandson. He

15:20

took Thomas

15:21

out of all black public schools as a kid,

15:23

and put him in a private

15:25

Catholic school, also all black,

15:28

with a great reputation. But

15:31

then Thomas moved to a white boarding

15:33

school to prepare for the seminary

15:36

to become a priest. There,

15:39

Thomas was one of the only black students,

15:42

and became the butt of jokes. They

15:45

get into bed, the lights go out, and

15:47

the jokes are like, smile

15:49

Clarence, I can't see, you know,

15:51

like, you know, black

15:53

people's white teeth is going to illuminate

15:55

the room or something.

15:58

for him.

16:00

He kept coming across racist

16:03

seminarians who were not exactly

16:05

Christ-like. No one spoke

16:08

up to defend him. So what really

16:10

bothered me more than anything else was the failure

16:13

of other people to have the courage

16:15

to stand up

16:16

for the visions, for the ideals that

16:19

we mouthed so easily. Then

16:22

came 1968. Did

16:24

they know about Martin Luther King? It

16:27

seemed that the whole world had gone mad.

16:31

I have some very sad news for all

16:33

of you, and that is

16:35

that Martin Luther King was shot

16:38

and was killed tonight in Memphis, Memphis. This

16:42

event,

16:44

this trauma, I could not take, especially

16:48

when one of my fellow seminarians, not

16:51

knowing that I was standing behind him, declared

16:55

that he hoped the S.O.B. died.

16:58

This was a man of God, mortally

17:01

stricken by an assassin's bullet,

17:05

and one preparing for the priesthood had

17:07

wished evil upon him.

17:11

In his autobiography, Thomas wrote

17:13

that the church was silent on the issue

17:16

of racism, and this silence

17:18

haunted him. That year,

17:21

he realized that no one was going to take

17:23

care of him or any

17:25

Black person in America. On

17:27

so many levels, it puts

17:31

young Clarence Thomas into a tizzy.

17:34

He feels like a pinball being

17:36

binged around the room here. He

17:38

wants to please his grandfather. He wants

17:41

to be a good Christian. He

17:43

wishes this seminary

17:45

was a more faithful

17:48

place to all of its children, so

17:50

he's sort of at a loss, and

17:53

that's when he leaves seminary.

17:55

Dropping out of seminary was not

17:58

part of the plan. My grandfather

18:00

was so furious, he kicked

18:02

him out of the house, cut him off financially.

18:06

The life I dreamed of so often

18:08

during those hot summers on the farm in

18:11

Georgia or during what seemed like

18:14

endless hours on the oil truck with my grandfather

18:17

expired as Dr. King expired. Suddenly

18:21

this cataclysmic event

18:24

ripped me from the moorings of my grandparents,

18:27

my youth and my faith, and

18:29

catapulted me headlong into the abyss.

18:32

I was being consumed by the

18:34

circumstances in which I found myself,

18:37

circumstances that I saw as responding

18:40

only to race. Race

18:42

became like a substitute religion. He

18:45

left the church, left the South altogether,

18:48

disillusioned by his grandfather's approach of

18:50

quiet dignity,

18:52

and went to a liberal arts college called

18:55

Holy Cross. He was one

18:57

of 20 black students new to

18:59

the school. And in these black students,

19:02

for the first time, he found community.

19:05

In college there was an air of excitement, apprehension,

19:08

and anger. We started the Black

19:10

Students Union. And searched for a way

19:12

to make sense of a cruel world. Through

19:16

another black man, one very

19:19

different from his grandfather. Distinguished

19:22

guests, brothers and sisters,

19:25

ladies and gentlemen, friends

19:27

and enemies. I

19:30

think what would really be a surprise

19:32

to people is he had Malcolm X records. And

19:35

so he would listen to Malcolm X and

19:37

he has it in his memory

19:40

banks, Malcolm X speeches

19:42

because he would listen to them interminably.

19:45

He was somebody who

19:47

identified

19:47

as a black nationalist.

19:55

on

20:00

Wachie Willick, now the Dean of Boston

20:02

University School of Law. She was one

20:04

of the first academics to write about how

20:07

Malcolm X and his Black nationalist

20:09

ideas influenced a young

20:11

Clarence Thomas.

20:12

Like walk me through, like what are Malcolm X's

20:15

ideas that sort of ring

20:17

true to Clarence Thomas's worldview?

20:20

This sense that integration is not

20:22

necessarily the answer, that one doesn't need to be

20:24

sitting in a classroom

20:26

with white people in order

20:29

to learn

20:29

better, right? That the issue

20:31

is unequal resources.

20:34

Black nationalism is the sense that

20:37

black people

20:37

are worthy and powerful

20:40

and can accomplish whatever we

20:42

would want on our own if

20:45

we rely on ourselves and work together

20:47

to achieve it. I

20:50

was a bit of a radical, but that's what happened

20:52

back then. You were black, things were

20:54

changing and we were very, very

20:57

upset. This is the militant

21:00

Clarence Thomas. I was tired of

21:02

being in the minority and

21:04

I was tired of turning the other cheek.

21:08

Trying to strike out in

21:10

a different direction. I along

21:12

with many blacks found ways

21:15

to protest. And trying to make

21:17

it clear to people who

21:19

he is,

21:19

the man respect for himself.

21:23

Everyone tried to change the treatment we received

21:25

in this country. You know, if

21:27

you ran into him on the campus, he

21:30

would not have come across to you as some

21:33

sort of milk toast, moderate, future

21:36

black conservative. No. He

21:38

would have seen this radical

21:40

looking young black man.

21:43

He saw himself as a crusader in

21:45

the movement for black power. We

21:47

protested. We worked in the free breakfast

21:49

program. We would walk out of school

21:52

in the winter of 1969 in protest.

21:55

But as Angela points out,

21:58

black nationalism is... and

22:01

there is overlap between Malcolm

22:03

X and Black conservatism. Although

22:06

we don't think of Malcolm X as being

22:08

conservative, I think it's a lot of

22:10

the things that you find in Black conservative ideology,

22:13

concepts of self-reliance,

22:16

economic improvement within the Black community, degradation

22:19

that comes with state-mandated segregation

22:22

and the state-mandated statements

22:23

that African Americans are inferior.

22:27

You know, those were the kinds of things you would hear Malcolm

22:29

X talking about. And I think

22:31

that it spoke to Clarence

22:34

Thomas in part because it resonated with everything

22:35

that he was experiencing in his life

22:38

and what he saw around him. And I think it

22:40

resonates with many Black people. I

22:43

closed out the 60s as

22:45

one angry young man, waiting

22:48

on the revolution that I was certain would

22:50

soon come.

22:54

On visits home to Georgia, Thomas

22:57

says he'd get into horrible exchanges

22:59

with his grandfather. Thomas

23:01

would talk about the revolution, and his

23:03

grandfather would say, I didn't raise

23:06

you to be like this. After all

23:08

our sacrifices, this is what

23:10

you've become.

23:11

One of those damn educated fools. And

23:15

Thomas would ask himself, how

23:17

could a Black man like his grandfather from

23:19

the Deep South, who had survived the

23:21

worst kind of bigotry possible,

23:24

refuse to admit that America was

23:26

tainted, corrupt, and

23:29

had to be rebuilt from the ground up? Something

23:33

didn't add up for Thomas. His

23:35

grandfather's approach of quiet dignity

23:38

didn't protect him in seminary. But

23:41

he started to notice that the revolutionary

23:43

road didn't seem to deliver for

23:45

Black people either. It all

23:47

came to a head at a protest

23:50

in 1970.

23:59

in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Have

24:02

a smoke from the fires, vapor from

24:04

the tear gas, and an irrequality

24:06

of unreality in familiar Harvard Square.

24:09

Why was I doing this rather than using my

24:11

intellect? When police displayed shotguns

24:13

and tear gas guns, voices from

24:15

the crowd shouted, Pig, and asked, Why

24:17

don't you kill someone? Perhaps I was

24:19

empowered by the anger and

24:22

relieved that I could now strike back at

24:24

the faceless oppressor. But

24:26

why was I conceding my intellect and

24:29

rather fighting much

24:29

like a brute? This I could

24:32

not answer, except to

24:34

say that I was tired of

24:36

being restrained. It

24:39

was intoxicating to act upon

24:41

one's rage, to wear it on one's

24:43

shoulder, to be defined by it. Yet

24:46

ultimately, it was destructive

24:48

and I knew it. So in the spring

24:51

of 1970, in a nihilistic fog, I

24:54

prayed that I be relieved of the anger

24:57

and the animosity that ate at my soul.

25:00

I did not want to hate anymore, and

25:02

I had to stop before it totally consumed me.

25:06

I had to make a fundamental choice. Do

25:08

I believe in the principles of this country

25:11

or not? After such

25:13

angst, I concluded that I did.

25:17

He

25:17

was wrestling with something that I think the entire

25:19

Black Freedom struggle was wrestling with.

25:22

Corey Robin again. And so, in

25:24

the early or late 60s and early 1970s, you

25:27

see a lot of Black Power activists

25:29

at the local level sort

25:31

of saying, you know, the day of marching and protest

25:33

is over. We've got to find other

25:36

ways.

25:38

So Thomas takes

25:40

a hard turn away

25:42

from revolution and enrolls in law

25:44

school. He

25:47

goes to Yale Law School. Juan

25:49

Williams. And much like people

25:51

talking about his silence

25:54

on the high court bench, he's pretty

25:57

much silent at Yale Law School.

25:59

And he doesn't want any kind of acknowledgement

26:03

of him as a black

26:05

activist or a black student.

26:08

He just wants to sit in the back of the class,

26:11

do his work and get A's.

26:13

What was your favorite memory as a student at

26:15

Yale? As far as my greatest

26:17

moment, there have been some singular

26:19

moments that I did have at Yale. It was

26:21

called graduation. I

26:25

got out of that place, man. He

26:28

went to the most elite law

26:30

school in the nation. Dean Angela

26:33

Unwachey Willick again. With people

26:34

from very, very privileged families

26:37

who might have made assumptions about him

26:40

and say things that are micro

26:43

aggressive and hurtful and harmful.

26:46

You also went to Yale, right?

26:48

For a PhD program. Is your

26:50

opinion of what he thinks informed by your experience

26:53

there? Yeah, I think

26:55

there, I mean, there's, there's a... Thomas

27:02

was treated very differently at

27:04

Yale than he was in Pinpoint or

27:06

at Seminary. Was

27:08

a different kind of racism. Was a much more subtle

27:11

racism. I think there are many

27:13

whites who act friendly toward

27:15

Negroes.

27:16

One of the things that Malcolm X

27:19

used to say, he made

27:21

a distinction between the fox

27:23

and the wolf. The wolf doesn't

27:25

act friendly. The wolf is

27:27

scary, bears his teeth, is

27:30

dangerous. You know what you're getting with the

27:32

wolf.

27:34

But the fox seems very

27:36

different from the wolf. The fox acts

27:39

friendly toward the lamb. Not

27:41

so scary, but is in the end

27:44

just as lethal as the

27:46

wolf. And usually the fox

27:48

is the one who ends up with the lamb chop

27:51

on his plate. And

27:55

Malcolm X used that analogy

27:58

to explain two different kinds of

28:00

white people. There's, you

28:02

know, the white southern racist, vicious,

28:06

violent, overt.

28:08

Kind of like the white woman who strut

28:10

up to Clarence Thomas' grandfather's house and

28:13

calls him boy. You know what

28:15

you're getting with that kind of white person.

28:19

And then there's a different kind of white person

28:22

who seems like what

28:24

we would call today your ally. Seems

28:27

like he or she cares about

28:29

you and for you and is looking out for you.

28:32

But is ultimately

28:34

like the fox, just as much

28:37

your enemy. Their appetite

28:39

is the same. Their motives are the

28:41

same. It's only their mannerisms

28:43

and methods that differ. And

28:46

that person, for Malcolm X,

28:49

is the liberal, the white liberal.

28:51

At Yale, Thomas

28:53

sees foxes everywhere.

28:59

One of his favorite songs in

29:01

the early 1970s Was that song,

29:04

Smiling Faces, Smiling Faces Tell

29:07

Lies. They

29:10

don't tell the truth. This

29:13

was his favorite song and he'd listen to it over and

29:15

over and over again. The thing that stays with me all these

29:17

years later about

29:20

the fact that I'm a white person is

29:22

that I'm not a white person.

29:24

The thing that stays with me all these

29:26

years later about his experience at

29:28

Yale is that Juan Williams again. When

29:30

he

29:31

went to do interviews for law

29:34

firms that all the law firms he

29:36

said wanted him to do

29:39

pro bono work and we were talking

29:41

to him about what he could do in

29:43

terms of race and he wanted

29:46

none of it. He didn't want

29:48

to be seen as a black man. He

29:50

wanted to be seen as a lawyer and a Yale Law

29:53

School graduate. I couldn't

29:55

get a job in my state of Georgia. I

29:57

looked at the firms in Atlanta. I looked at

29:59

lots of. places, I got

30:01

zero job offers. But eventually

30:04

he did get an offer from Missouri's attorney

30:06

general. The biggest problem that I had

30:08

with him is he was a Republican, but

30:12

I got over it when I had only had one job

30:14

offer.

30:17

By 1980, Clarence

30:20

Thomas says he was disillusioned by

30:22

the Democrats and their promises to

30:24

legislate black people's problems out

30:26

of existence.

30:28

He was searching for a new path,

30:30

one that would combine the wisdom of his

30:32

grandfather and of Malcolm

30:35

X, a path that led

30:37

him to the Black Alternatives Conference.

30:40

That's how we met Juan Williams, how

30:42

we got on President Reagan's radar, and

30:44

eventually how

30:46

he was appointed to the Supreme Court

30:48

by Reagan's successor, George H.W.

30:50

Bush. The confirmation

30:53

hearing and the allegations against him

30:55

could fill and have filled a

30:58

whole other series of podcasts.

31:01

We didn't talk about, you know, for example, Anita Hill,

31:03

you know. There

31:06

was another line of questioning at his hearings

31:08

that we don't hear much about anymore. One

31:11

of the charges that has been brought

31:13

against you in this nominating process

31:16

is that you

31:19

benefited by quotas

31:21

or affirmative action, but

31:24

do not support them. Yes, the question

31:26

is directly in entry to Yale. Were

31:30

you part of an affirmative action quota?

31:32

Were you part of a racial quota in terms

31:34

of entering that law school? Senator,

31:37

I have not during my

31:39

adult life or during my

31:41

academic career been a part of any quota.

31:45

The effort on the part of Yale

31:47

during my years

31:49

there was to reach out and

31:52

open its doors to minorities

31:54

whom it felt were qualified.

31:56

And I took them at their worst.

32:01

I found that honestly on a personal level, like kind

32:03

of a rude thing to ask. Yeah.

32:07

What do you make of that kind of question?

32:11

Was he a beneficiary, you think, of

32:13

affirmative action? Oh, I mean,

32:15

I think yes, but I don't mean it as

32:17

a slight. From what we could tell, Thomas

32:20

was accepted to Yale in 1971 under an affirmative

32:22

action program.

32:25

His graduating class of 1974 had 12 black people in it. And

32:30

Dean Angela says it's unlikely

32:32

Thomas would have been appointed to the court by his

32:34

credentials alone. Traditionally,

32:37

people appointed to the Supreme Court have a history

32:39

of clerking for judges or working

32:42

on lower courts. He didn't have all

32:44

the markers

32:46

that many of the other Supreme Court

32:48

justices have, and

32:50

yet fully capable

32:52

of doing excellent

32:54

work. There were clearly

32:57

structural racist reasons why he didn't

32:59

have a clerkship. Even now,

33:02

like almost no

33:04

black people were being hired for any kind of

33:06

judicial clerkships, much less Supreme Court clerkships.

33:09

I spoke to one of the very few

33:11

black law clerks there have ever been on

33:13

the Supreme Court. Justice Thomas was just so

33:16

personable and kind to put me at ease. Stephen

33:19

F. Smith, now a law professor at Notre

33:21

Dame, got the job to clerk for

33:23

Clarence Thomas in 1993,

33:26

just two years after he was appointed. It's

33:29

almost like you didn't even know you were

33:31

interviewing. Because I was just sitting there as a young

33:34

guy, I can't believe I'm in the Supreme Court.

33:36

He might have seen himself in Clarence Thomas. They

33:39

both came from humble beginnings in

33:41

the South. There was just natural points of

33:43

affinity like that, in addition,

33:45

of course, to being both black and

33:48

on the conservative side of things. That's

33:50

a one-year job, and then the time just

33:52

flew by. We've stayed in touch off and on.

33:55

Smith wrote an article called Clarence

33:58

X in 2009. that claimed

34:00

Justice Clarence Thomas was

34:02

a black nationalist, at

34:04

least a version of a black nationalist,

34:07

and that Thomas had retained his Malcolm

34:09

X roots as a jurist. By

34:12

and large, people left and

34:14

right were completely blind

34:16

to this. And on the right, totally blind,

34:19

before I wrote my article,

34:22

Corey Robin, he wrote a book recently

34:24

on Justice Thomas and endorsing the idea

34:27

that Justice Thomas has

34:29

a black nationalist streak. You know,

34:31

Corey Robin. Apparently, I'm a Marxist

34:33

professor who pretends to understand

34:35

Clarence Thomas better than his wife. I'm

34:38

not a Marxist. I had written something very

34:40

similar in the Clarence X piece,

34:43

but

34:43

that just shows you, even she doesn't

34:46

see it. She's married to the guy, and she doesn't see

34:48

it. He's a black nationalist. Do

34:50

you know if Justice Thomas was upset about

34:52

the book or about your article at all? I

34:54

don't know what he thought about the book, and I know he was

34:57

not upset about the article. In fact, it was kind of funny.

34:59

I sent it to him. And he wrote me a note

35:01

back and hoped

35:03

I was doing well. And then

35:05

he signed it, Clarence X. So...

35:09

Wow. So I don't think he was a... He

35:11

was not opposed to it. I don't think he objected to the comparison,

35:13

yes.

35:17

Stephen Smith makes the claim that Clarence

35:20

X, black nationalist, is

35:22

on full display in

35:24

his Supreme Court decisions. If

35:27

you were gonna tell the story of Clarence Thomas

35:30

in one Supreme Court case, where

35:33

would you focus? The mission and

35:35

affirmative action cases really

35:38

just show, you know, just

35:40

black nationalist thinking. I think

35:42

it's undeniable.

35:52

After the break, we travel

35:54

back in time to the University

35:56

of Michigan, when Clarence X

35:59

was in the mining. minority decision. The

36:02

dissent that could be today's majority

36:04

opinion.

36:20

From WNYC Studios, this

36:23

is More Perfect. I'm Julia Longoria,

36:26

and we are back.

36:30

The year is 2003. And

36:37

just like this current term in the Supreme Court,

36:40

there were two affirmative action cases

36:42

the court was considering. Both

36:44

at the University of Michigan, white

36:47

students versus administrators. I

36:49

just remember the sense of reading

36:52

his opinions over the years, and

36:55

just saying, wow, he is saying things

36:57

in these cases that nobody else

36:59

is saying, number one.

37:00

Former Thomas Clerk Stephen

37:03

Smith again. And number two, when he says

37:05

those things, none of the other conservatives

37:07

are signing on. So they're voting the

37:09

same way on

37:11

these racial issues that come before the

37:13

court. But Thomas has a unique take.

37:15

So if you were telling

37:17

the movie version of this case, how

37:20

does it start? Okay gosh, that's a hard

37:22

one. Corey Robbins says if

37:25

affirmative action, the movie, were

37:27

made by white conservatives, he

37:29

knows exactly

37:30

who the main character would be. They

37:33

think about the white victim of

37:35

affirmative action.

37:36

Can we get you up closer to the mics? Why

37:39

do you think what happened to you

37:41

was wrong? I

37:43

think that racial discrimination is wrong. Diversity

37:46

is about your character and your experiences.

37:49

It's not about your skin color.

37:50

They think about that white ethnic

37:53

kid, maybe whose father was a factory

37:55

worker, who's Polish or

37:58

Italian.

37:59

That's not where Thomas begins.

38:02

It doesn't begin with a white law

38:04

student. He really begins with

38:07

a white administrator.

38:11

Thomas' movie stars the white

38:13

person picking who gets in to

38:15

the University of Michigan. Mary

38:17

Sue Coleman here. They're those liberal

38:20

racists that Malcolm

38:22

X warned us about.

38:24

Yes, I'm Mary

38:26

Sue Coleman. And I'm president of the University

38:28

of Michigan. These

38:30

administrators, why do they want

38:32

affirmative action? Is it because

38:35

they care about black people? No way.

38:37

And he says, you know, the first thing you have to know about

38:40

these people, their first commitment above

38:42

all else, is to

38:44

elitism. Exclusivism.

38:47

There's a circumstance where we're a highly competitive institution

38:49

where we have many, many more students than can

38:51

possibly be admitted to the university. And

38:54

I feel sorry when everybody doesn't get in who wants

38:56

to get in. They

38:56

want their law school

38:59

to be really hard to get into. It's

39:01

getting much harder to get into a top

39:03

school and nearly impossible to

39:06

get into the Ivy's today. The harder it is

39:08

to get in, the more of a

39:10

kind of elite preserve

39:12

you have.

39:13

At Harvard, only 3.4% of all applicants were

39:15

accepted. That's

39:17

when those statistics come out. Columbia's

39:20

rate dropped to 3.7% from 4%, 5%, 6%. They

39:24

love that stuff. They

39:28

love it. Because the lower your acceptance

39:30

rate is, the more exclusive you

39:32

are. I

39:34

hope this is filmic enough.

39:38

You're making movies, Cory.

39:45

And if they truly wanted to open up

39:47

the institution to students of color,

39:49

to black people, and again I'm speaking in

39:51

Thomas' voice. If that's what they cared

39:53

about most, the simplest, easiest

39:56

way to do that is to get rid

39:58

of the LSAT.

40:00

We know that the LSAT

40:03

reproduces a kind of racial skew

40:05

and It's not because black

40:08

people are less intelligent than white people

40:11

These tests are designed in a certain way

40:13

because white people have access to tutors.

40:16

So get rid of the goddamn LSAT

40:19

University of Michigan law school is a top 10 law

40:21

school Administrators want the school

40:23

to stay above the rest. I

40:26

teach at CUNY. CUNY, where

40:28

Corey teaches serves a huge population.

40:31

It's not trying to be elite. CUNY

40:34

is a genuinely multi-racial

40:36

institution and my classrooms

40:39

look like the kind of classrooms that defenders

40:42

of affirmative action Claim

40:44

they want but the University

40:46

of Michigan doesn't want to be like

40:48

CUNY. It wants to be elite

40:52

so then the question is if

40:54

we're gonna be elite and Diverse

40:57

how do we do it? And and and why do

40:59

we want to be diverse and here? Thomas

41:02

I think Starts hitting

41:05

very close to the bone. He says because

41:07

you want the look of a certain classroom

41:10

aesthetics

41:12

It's kind of a shocking word when

41:14

you think about it Because

41:16

what he's saying is you want your

41:18

ruling class

41:20

To look a certain way you want

41:22

a world that looks kind of like what we used

41:24

to call a Benetton ad, right? Multi-racial

41:29

Multicultural and Thomas, I don't even

41:31

know if he uses exactly these words, but there's a suggestion

41:33

like they want to look hip

41:36

And that's what it's really about So

41:38

then the question is how do we maintain

41:41

our elitism and our exclusivity?

41:43

members only and Get

41:47

that kind of racial aesthetic that we're

41:49

looking for enter affirmative

41:52

action This is exploitative

41:54

right you're exploiting blacks professor

41:57

Stephen Smith again. You're not saying

42:00

giving minorities a chance to prove

42:02

themselves at this higher level and to benefit

42:05

from the greater instruction available at that level,

42:07

you're saying we need them here

42:09

so that we're a more elite institution.

42:13

And so Thomas says that's exploitative, that

42:15

you're choosing black and minority

42:18

applicants through affirmative action, not because

42:20

you want them there or because they'll benefit from

42:22

being there, but simply to

42:24

make the class quote, look right. And

42:27

for Thomas, like that's what the story of affirmative

42:29

action

42:29

is all about, is enhancing

42:32

the discretionary power of white

42:35

elites to choose which

42:37

black person is going to sit at the table with

42:39

them. And, you

42:42

know, this is to use

42:44

a little triggering for

42:47

him. It reminds

42:49

him of, you know, what it was like

42:51

at law school. And ultimately,

42:54

I think it makes him think of just the

42:56

story of white America.

43:00

To Thomas,

43:03

you know what you're getting with the blatant

43:05

racism of a Southern white woman calling

43:08

your grandfather boy.

43:10

He prefers that to the hidden

43:12

racism of the white administrator. It's

43:15

disguised as benevolence and

43:17

assumes black people can only

43:20

succeed with white people's

43:22

help. Where

43:33

do you think his argument falls

43:36

apart, if it does, for you?

43:38

On this particular issue? Corey Robin

43:40

again. Yeah, yeah. So,

43:49

my answer

43:52

to where, you know, how would you counter him

43:54

or where he goes wrong, I

43:57

think once you went down that argument about

43:59

diversity,

43:59

I think then you

44:02

are vulnerable. And I think their

44:04

Clarence Thomas is kind of right.

44:07

I think he believes he's setting the record

44:09

for what will eventually be declared to

44:11

be right. Dean Angela Unwachie

44:13

Willick again. But I think he's wrong.

44:17

It's way more complicated, right? Schools

44:20

are thinking about how do they get students in the

44:22

door,

44:23

what tuition people are going to pay,

44:25

how do they operate. Angela would

44:28

know. She's a law school dean. She

44:30

says these days one of the big arguments

44:33

people make against affirmative action is that

44:35

these kids who are applying, they

44:37

might not get into Yale or University

44:39

of Michigan, but they'll get in somewhere.

44:41

And so the response really to

44:43

that is

44:45

there is something meaningful about

44:47

having access to the University of Michigan Law School and

44:49

the ways in which it can launch someone's career

44:52

and the way that other schools may not

44:54

be able to launch someone's career.

44:56

Her point is elite institutions

44:59

matter. And if we make them more diverse,

45:02

that's better for the country.

45:04

The beauty of being able to be in higher

45:06

education institutions that are diverse is

45:08

that that's one of the few places in our very, very

45:11

residentially segregated society where

45:13

people of different backgrounds come

45:15

together.

45:16

The subtle racism that Clarence Thomas

45:18

went through at Yale in a den of

45:20

Malcolm X Foxes is a fine

45:23

price to pay. One of the realities

45:25

of that is because everybody's lived in their own

45:27

segregated bubbles, people say

45:29

and do things that are often

45:32

unknowingly, unintentionally offensive

45:35

and hurtful, particularly for those

45:37

who historically found themselves

45:40

on the margins

45:40

or on the outside of society.

45:44

And it is one of the necessary

45:48

pains that we have to go through as a society

45:51

to get better.

46:04

Angela says diversity is

46:06

worth it. But

46:08

Corey Robbins says diversity

46:11

is the wrong word. There was a different

46:13

possible answer, which was essentially

46:15

reparations. The

46:18

reason why black people deserve

46:21

affirmative action is look

46:23

at all the ways in which they've been held back.

46:26

Affirmative action shouldn't be about creating

46:28

the shiniest brochure with a token

46:31

hijabi and black person laughing

46:34

on a lawn.

46:35

It should be about righting real wrongs

46:38

that have been done in our country. Yeah, I mean,

46:40

it seems like affirmative

46:43

action is this band-aid

46:45

in a way that distracts us from solving

46:48

the real systemic problems. Right.

46:51

Yeah. Now, of course,

46:53

you know, well, I would say, you know, Thomas,

46:56

once we start talking about the systemic problems, you're talking

46:58

about, you know, economic redistribution,

47:01

a whole bunch of other things that he wouldn't

47:03

buy either. That's Corey Robbins,

47:06

the Marxist professor who thinks he knows Thomas

47:09

better than his wife. So

47:11

I think there are some people

47:14

who might be sympathetic to him, but, you know, they should

47:16

understand, like, he's not

47:18

buying the rest of the package either.

47:20

Speaking into Thomas's decisions, he

47:23

seems to start with ideas that

47:26

Malcolm X and many black

47:28

people might agree with.

47:30

It's interesting because so many of the

47:32

ideas themselves are things that,

47:35

you know, I might say in a room with

47:37

my friends, or I've heard

47:39

certainly from many black people who would identify

47:41

as liberal as well, we

47:43

just come out differently in terms of what we

47:45

think the solution or the approach should

47:47

be. But then he

47:49

makes a big turn, a

47:52

turn that ends with him siding firmly

47:55

in the camp of white conservatives like

47:57

Scalia and Alito.

47:59

examples. There's a 1999 decision

48:02

Chicago v. Morales. I

48:05

remember that sticking out to me.

48:07

A city law let

48:09

local police break up groups

48:11

that included anyone they quote, reasonably

48:14

believed to be a gang member. The

48:17

Supreme Court's majority struck down that

48:19

law, saying it was too vague and

48:21

violated Chicagoans rights due process.

48:24

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.

48:27

I remember reading the Morales opinion and thinking,

48:29

oh, this is a really interesting angle

48:31

because he is asserting

48:33

things that you hear within African

48:35

American communities. Thomas

48:38

writes, gangs fill the daily

48:40

lives of many of our poorest and most vulnerable

48:43

citizens with a terror that

48:45

the court does not

48:46

give sufficient consideration. Thomas

48:49

admits black people are some of the

48:51

biggest victims of violence, but

48:54

reasoning that loitering isn't

48:57

a constitutional right, his

48:59

solution is to give the police latitude

49:01

to crack down on criminals harder.

49:04

Before that,

49:06

a 1993 case in Houston called

49:09

Graham v. Collins. This time,

49:11

Thomas was in the majority.

49:13

A jury sentenced a black 17-year-old

49:15

to death after convicting him of

49:17

murdering a white man. He always

49:19

said he was innocent, but the question

49:21

before the court was, should the jury

49:24

consider the defendants troubled childhood,

49:27

which might reduce his sentence? The

49:30

court basically said, no,

49:33

and he was executed. In

49:36

his opinion, Thomas says, juries

49:39

are racist. He even quotes

49:41

Justice Thurgood Marshall, who said, giving

49:44

juries too much discretion would be,

49:46

quote, an open invitation

49:48

to discrimination. Thomas

49:50

goes on to say that a mandatory

49:52

death penalty scheme would be a fine

49:55

way to address this problem.

49:57

And finally, voting

49:59

rights. Black voters

50:01

and the NAACP sued a Georgia

50:04

county in 1994 over an election

50:06

system they claimed diluted the black

50:08

vote. They said it violated the

50:11

Voting Rights Act, the civil rights law that

50:13

was meant to protect black

50:14

voters from all the ways white

50:16

people were suppressing their vote. Thomas'

50:19

opinion is scathing and

50:22

sweeping.

50:22

He says assuming

50:25

that black voters want to

50:27

vote for a black candidate flattens

50:30

black people.

50:30

The court might

50:32

as well say that all black voters think

50:35

alike. He then goes on

50:37

to say, there's no proof

50:39

that the black vote in the county has

50:42

been diluted because black

50:44

people don't necessarily share

50:46

political goals.

50:49

And even if there was proof, he

50:51

says, the Voting Rights

50:54

Act doesn't cover that. The

50:56

point of the act isn't to give courts

50:59

the power to interfere in elections. The

51:02

only right the law gives black

51:04

people is the right to cast

51:06

a ballot. Nothing more.

51:11

What is Justice Thomas' dream

51:14

vision of America, do you think? Well,

51:18

I mean, I think he probably would readily

51:21

agree with Martin Luther King's dream, right? And

51:23

that he has optimism.

51:27

It's honestly kind of surprising to

51:29

hear you call Justice Thomas an optimist.

51:32

And I'm trying to think why. It

51:35

seems like the black nationalist

51:39

perspective is one that

51:41

kind of takes for granted that

51:44

white people or Americans,

51:47

America will always be racist.

51:50

And that, I guess, strikes me as a

51:52

pessimistic worldview. Well,

51:55

so yeah, if you focus on that part, that

51:57

is a pessimistic outlook. I

52:01

don't think black nationalists are not, they don't

52:03

have fixed and unchangeable views on

52:05

that. So, but I think Thomas's

52:07

view, even though racism exists,

52:10

black people can still prosper and

52:12

succeed that we are not fated to fail.

52:15

I think that is an optimistic point

52:17

of view. And just as Thomas pointed

52:20

out, has pointed out in some of his writings,

52:22

like, hey, even during Jim Crow, right?

52:25

When the state was as unconstitutionally

52:28

explicitly arrayed against

52:29

us and our progress, black

52:32

people still did amazing things, right? There were success

52:34

stories that happened. We

52:37

had black doctors, we had black nurses, we had black

52:39

lawyers, we had a vibrant black middle class.

52:42

So I think at the bottom, black nationalism

52:45

is optimistic in that sense. We're here to stay,

52:47

we're not gonna pack up and leave, and

52:50

we can prosper here, regardless of

52:52

what white people think about us.

52:57

Now, you can call that optimistic, and

53:00

I understand exactly why Professor

53:02

Smith calls it optimistic. But

53:05

I think we have to step back and ask

53:07

ourselves, you know, what

53:10

is the optimistic story? Thomas

53:13

says, growing up under

53:15

Jim Crow was about as close to a totalitarian

53:18

society as

53:20

the United States has ever come. And

53:23

the kind of spirit that both Smith

53:25

and Thomas described, you know, reminds

53:27

me of kind of like the way Russian dissidents used

53:29

to talk,

53:31

that amidst

53:34

these conditions, black

53:37

people survive. And

53:41

I see that as an extraordinarily

53:44

bleak vision.

53:48

Can I split the baby and say that it is,

53:52

both pessimistic and optimistic,

53:54

but

53:54

interestingly, in a way that's

53:56

divided by race, optimistic about black

53:58

people's potential. but pessimistic

54:00

about white people's potential. Where

54:04

do you fall on that, personally?

54:08

Where do I fall? I

54:10

think I am optimistic about all of

54:13

our potential to change.

54:15

What is the most important thing you

54:17

can do to change? Optimist

54:29

or pessimist, Clarence Thomas,

54:31

in all his complexity, has

54:33

been invisible to many of us. On

54:36

both the left and the right, we've

54:38

refused to see him. Instead,

54:42

we say he's just like his white conservative

54:43

colleagues on the Supreme Court. Or

54:46

we see his wife, Ginny, and lately

54:49

we focus on the gifts from his ultra-rich

54:52

friends. But looking

54:54

directly at Thomas, it's clear

54:57

he's not trying to hide who he is or

54:59

what he believes. Like Malcolm

55:01

X or MLK, he has his own

55:03

American dream. A vision

55:05

where Black people can succeed without

55:08

any help. Especially

55:10

not from white people. He calls

55:13

white help the most

55:14

devastating form of racism. He

55:17

doesn't acknowledge the gifts he's received along

55:20

the way. But this is the

55:22

vision that's driven him on the highest

55:24

court of our country. He

55:26

might remain invisible to some of us, but

55:29

he is here to stay. Look,

55:33

you will always remember I am the termite

55:35

in your basement. When you're on vacation,

55:38

I am at work. I

55:42

will never, ever go. I will

55:44

be there. And

55:46

that's where I've been. They

55:48

can go and have spring break. They

55:51

can go and backpack in Europe.

55:54

And I'm that termite, working away.

55:58

Thank you all. Thank you,

56:00

Texas.

56:14

More Perfect is a production of WNYC

56:17

Studios. This episode was produced

56:19

by me, Saman Adhan and Julia

56:21

Longoria. It was edited by Emily

56:23

Botin and Alyssa Eads. Fact

56:25

Check by Naomi Sharp. Special

56:27

thanks this week to Kenya Young, Tara Grove,

56:30

Jeannie Sue Gerson, Andre Robert Lee,

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Kavan. The

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More Perfect team also includes Emily Seiner,

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